Sunday, April 24, 2016

Only Text, quoth Yahweh . . .

The essential moment of the story of Pesach, for me, is on Mt.
Sinai, and in particular, the 2nd commandment. The rest was kind of boiler
plate: honor yr father and mother, do not covet, don't kill (more than
absolutely necessary), etc..

But in the 2nd commandment Yahweh says something truly original
for a change: NO GRAVEN IMAGES!

Given the age, this means, only text will do, only text is for
me.

And since alphabetic text was the hot shit new thing in the
world at the time, he meant alphabetic text.

(Not hieroglyphics, or cuneiform 2.0.)

Yahweh was promoting alphabetic text, only alphabetic text. Other
media were treyf.

The Greeks mastered alphabetic text at about the same time,
wrote some pretty good stuff in their version of it, I hear. But it never
occurred to them that for the sake of this revolutionary new, and more
universally accessible medium, they had to give up sculpture, painting, drama,
etc.